My approach to the flamenco. (Eng, Esp, Ita)

Naples. Palapartenope. While I prepare nervously the old audiocassette recorder that my father had given me, suddenly I hear the six open strings playing, one by one. An unusual tuning, but I already knew what he was going to play. A song I knew by heart, note by note. Paco de Lucia was sitting there, a few meters away, the smoke of the stage looked like I was having an appearance. Finally, I could hear him, see him, but above all live him. I remember that feeling like it was yesterday. That November 27, 1997, at age 14, I discovered how much I deeply loved Flamenco. This wonderful music played in a "strange" way gave me a strong attraction from the first notes, and a crazy desire to know why.

Who calls or considers me a flamenco guitarist, is really wrong. Personally I never said that, because I am not and I will never be it, because I decided not to become one. Over the years I realized that what it really exploded inside of me was that curiosity, mixed with a genuine envy, to know why the flamencos simply sit and play without too many problems or thoughts. I'm used to seeing any classical musician immersed in apparent state of meditation, or make strange gestures and superstitious rituals before each concert ... I tried but it didn't work with me, or it was not enough: every concert I had a terrible tension and went on stage again with shaking hands. "I can't play like this!" I said.

I started studying flamenco because I was fascinated to know what feeling would give me the order to be able to play that music. Then I realized that the apparent tranquility all flamencos and jazz musicians have was due to the fact that the notes they play are not "enclosed" in a music sheet. Paradoxically, they are allowed to play the wrong notes because the right ones are not written. What terrifies every classical musician is missing a note, a wrong step, have memory lapses, especially when "at home everything sounded great!". Some become white as a corpse. Give a classical music sheet to a flamenco or jazz player and he will feel the weight of each note written there. The so-called classical music "suffers" of what I consider to be an handicap: it's all written, it is always the same and there is no way out.

All this was painful for me! I did not want to suffer for the rest of my life. And the real reason I studied flamenco is because I wanted to get through this step and be able to have the same approach that flamenco and jazz musicians have: to play as if it were not written and to feel free and relaxed. And it's working for me. I had to prove myself for years, going to play on big stages without going through the three hours before the concert closed in the green-room practicing scales and arpeggios, a kind of fundamental warming-up almost all classical musicians do. Today I like staying on the stage until they open the doors to the public, getting my guitar used to the temperature of the hall, taking confidence with the acoustics, the smells and the energy around me.

Between 1997 and his death,which happened on February 2014, I had the pleasure of listening to Paco de Lucia in concert perhaps almost 20 times. The last few times I was able to meet him in the green-room, he often wondered "Are you a classical guitarist?" and I said "Yes, Maestro." "How was the sound? I had a lot of mistakes because I couldn't hear myself very well". Today I would answer: "Don't worry, Maestro, because how you have played right the wrong notes, nobody is able to do". This is the secret. In my opinion.